Page:Redcoat (1927).djvu/47

 heard a series of long drawn out sounds, which reverberated along the mountainside, and rolled away into the distance. They were evidently sounds made by some animal, even the young foxes knew that instinctively. But the sounds seemed to disturb the old foxes. For they got the pups together and Mother Fox went with them into a distant portion of the forest, while Father Fox went to intercept the hound and to lead him far away from his family.

Father Fox did not return for hours and when he did come back he seemed very weary, but he did not lie down to rest, instead he took the small foxes away into the swamp where the strange sounds had first come from, and after smelling about for a while they located the tracks of the hound. Father Fox was very careful that the youngsters got this scent into their nostrils very decidedly, for this was still another dangerous scent. After they had surely identified the hound scent, Father Fox took his family away to the old burrow in the spruces where he rested for the rest of the night.